A healthy balance of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in your diet will help keep your blood glucose on target. How much of each will depend on many factors, including your weight and your personal preferences. Watching your carbohydrates -- knowing how much you need and how many you are eating -- is key to blood sugar control. If you are overweight, either a low-carbohydrate, low-fat/low calorie, or Mediterranean diet may help you get your weight to goal. No more than 7% of your diet should come from saturated fat, and you should try to avoid trans fats altogether.
Gene therapy can be used to turn duodenum cells and duodenum adult stem cells into beta cells which produce insulin and amylin naturally. By delivering beta cell DNA to the intestine cells in the duodenum, a few intestine cells will turn into beta cells, and subsequently adult stem cells will develop into beta cells. This makes the supply of beta cells in the duodenum self replenishing, and the beta cells will produce insulin in proportional response to carbohydrates consumed.[78]

Some medical professionals use an Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) to test for diabetes. If you’ve ever been pregnant and had to drink the sickeningly sweet sugar cocktail and then have blood drawn, you are familiar with this one. Basically, a patient is given 50-75 grams of glucose in concentrated solution and his blood sugar response is measured. I’m not a fan of this test because no one should be ingesting that much concentrated glucose, and the test is not a completely accurate measure. (Just a side note: if you are a drinker of the “Big Gulp” drinks or large amounts of soda, you are putting your body through a similar test each day! Eventually, your body will respond, probably with something like “Fine, you want diabetes, I’ll show you diabetes!)

Eating right and exercising more often is good for everyone. But it's especially important for people with type 2 diabetes. When people put on too much body fat, it's because they're eating more calories than they use each day. The body stores that extra energy in fat cells. Over time, gaining pounds of extra fat can lead to obesity and diseases related to obesity, like type 2 diabetes.
India is said to be the diabetes capital of the world. With nearly 50 million people in India suffering from diabetes, the country has a big challenge to face. First, let’s know what is diabetes. The elevated sugar in the blood is called diabetes. There are two primary reasons behind diabetes - one is when our body stops producing insulin and second is when the body does not respond to insulin that is produced by the body. Insulin is broken down by the body and used as energy, which is transported to the cells. There are two types of diabetes - Type I diabetes and Type II diabetes. Let’s know about them in a little detail:
Eating too many refined carbohydrates elevates your insulin levels for long periods of time and your cells start to become resistant to the effects of insulin. Think of this a bit like alcohol. When you start to drink, a single glass of wine can make you feel drunk. Once your body becomes accustomed to drinking, you need more and more alcohol to achieve the same effect. This is what happens in diabetes. You need more and more insulin to do the same thing. The problem is that too much insulin is toxic to the body.
“The degree of carbohydrate restriction that we recommend to establish and then maintain nutritional ketosis depends upon individual factors such degree of insulin resistance (metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes?) and physical activity. These starting levels of carb restriction typically vary between 30 and 60 grams per day of total carbs. The best way to determine one’s carbohydrate tolerance is to directly measure blood ketones with a finger-stick glucometer that also accommodates ketone testing.

Anti-diabetic medications are used to control type 2 diabetes mellitus. In this case, body cells are resistant to insulin (injections), therefore medications are given orally to lower the blood glucose levels. In most of the cases, oral hypoglycemic agents are highly effective. One just needs to ascertain which suits him/her the best. There are several classes of anti-diabetic drugs. Largely, their selection depends on the nature of the diabetes, age and situation of the person, as well as other factors.

Storage of liver fat can only occur when daily calorie intake exceeds expenditure. Sucrose overfeeding for 3 weeks has been shown to cause a 30% increase in liver fat content (37). The associated metabolic stress on hepatocytes was reflected by a simultaneous 30% rise in serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels, and both liver fat and serum ALT returned to normal levels during a subsequent hypocaloric diet. Superimposed upon a positive calorie balance, the extent of portal vein hyperinsulinemia determines how rapidly conversion of excess sugars to fatty acid occurs in the liver. In groups of both obese and nonobese subjects, it was found that those with higher plasma insulin levels have markedly increased rates of hepatic de novo lipogenesis (2,38,39). Conversely, in type 1 diabetes the relatively low insulin concentration in the portal vein (as a consequence of insulin injection into subcutaneous tissue) is associated with subnormal liver fat content (40). Initiation of subcutaneous insulin therapy in type 2 diabetes brings about a decrease in portal insulin delivery by suppression of pancreatic insulin secretion and, hence, a decrease in liver fat (41). Hypocaloric diet (42), physical activity (43), or thiazolidinedione use (23,44) each reduces insulin secretion and decreases liver fat content. Newly synthesized triacylglycerol in the liver will be either oxidized, exported, or stored as hepatic triacylglycerol. Because transport of fatty acid into mitochondria for oxidation is inhibited by the malonyl-CoA produced during de novo lipogenesis, newly synthesized triacylglycerol is preferentially directed toward storage or export. Hence, hepatic fat content and plasma VLDL triacylglycerol levels are increased.
Robert Ferry Jr., MD, is a U.S. board-certified Pediatric Endocrinologist. After taking his baccalaureate degree from Yale College, receiving his doctoral degree and residency training in pediatrics at University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA), he completed fellowship training in pediatric endocrinology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.